It is a stormy June afternoon and I sit here trying to write adequate words for my anniversary. Seven years ago today, we were married under a clear blue sky, beside a river, and in front of a grand old tree.
Marriage is so much, and so complicated, and I can’t find the right words to contain how I feel. It is simply this: I have entwined my life with the best man I know. He is smart and kind and hard-working and funny and a great dad and he makes me laugh. But the way I feel about being married to him is so much more than that. It is that we have created something, joined forces and made a world and a home and a place that is only ours, a place that I didn’t know existed and now can’t bear to exist without. So I’ll leave it to Mary Oliver, who always has the right words.
Coming Home
by Mary Oliver
When we’re driving, in the dark,
on the long road
to Provincetown, which lies empty
for miles, when we’re weary,
when the buildings
and the scrub pines lose
their familiar look,
I imagine us rising
from the speeding car,
I imagine us seeing
everything from another place — the top
of one of the pale dunes
or the deep and nameless
fields of the sea —
and what we see is the world
that cannot cherish us
but which we cherish,
and what we see is our life
moving like that,
along the dark edges
of everything — the headlights
like lanterns
sweeping the blackness —
believing in a thousand
fragile and unprovable things,
looking out for sorrow,
slowing down for happiness,
making all the right turns
right down to the thumping
barriers to the sea,
the swirling waves,
the narrow streets, the houses,
the past, the future,
the doorway that belongs
to you and me.
My Words Go Here 